


A bookshop is not a business

by anactoriatalksback



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A brilliant comment dubbed this a gay version of the Python Cheese Shop Sketch, Also I was hungry when I wrote this story and you can kind of tell, Alternate Universe - Human, And I am livid with jealousy that I didn't think of that myself, Aziraphale is a leetle bit of a stalker, Aziraphale's Bookshop, Hey guys is it flirting if I tell you I can't sell you a book but you keep coming back?, M/M, Only one book got sold in the making of this fic, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: In which Aziraphale has no intention of selling books to anyone at all, let alone this infuriatingly persistent customer. No matter how nice his cheekbones are...





	1. Chapter 1

‘I want this one.’

For a moment, Ezra Fell considers playing possum. If he stays perfectly still, he thinks, this interloper will go away.

He freezes as the floorboards creak. The possessor of the voice is coming closer. An odd gait, thinks Fell: Creak (stage pause) ClatterCreak (stage pause) ClatterCreak. A weird sauntering gavotte.

And now it’s just outside Fell’s antechamber.

‘There you are,’ says the voice, and then a man looks in.

He’s slim, this man. He has red hair and his cheekbones carve out great canyons beneath them. His eyes, peeking over his sunglasses, are the precise shade of weak afternoon sunlight refracted through an Islay single malt.

Ezra notices these things. He _notices_ that he notices them. All this is decidedly inconvenient, but can be forgiven. But the man is holding up a first edition of a _General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money_ like he has _plans_ for it, and _honestly_. The _nerve_.

Still, one must go through the motions.

‘Ah,’ says Fell, ‘how lovely. An interest of yours?’

‘Money?’ says the man. ‘Well, I’m an investment banker, so…no. Not at all.’

Fell summons a polite titter. ‘Yes, very good, ha ha. Er – a gift, then?’

‘You see,’ says the man, leaning over confidentially (Fell squares his shoulders and tries to hold his ground), ‘Head Office is sending someone over. American. Dreadful chap. But the occasion needs to be marked. So…’

Fell looks at the book. Gilt-edged, library edition. It’ll cost him a pretty penny – if Fell lets him have it. Which he won’t.

‘He’s a great reader, then, this American?’ asks Fell.

The man’s teeth flash in the gloom of the bookshop. ‘Hates books. Probably can’t read. Can’t hold a pen in his hand without crushing it. Not qualified to be anything but a billionaire, really.’

Fell tilts his head. ‘And this is why you’re giving him a book?’

Another grin. ‘Yup.’

Fell considers. He understands, of course, that parvenu Americans must be mocked and tormented – it does seem a terrible _waste_ not to – but he didn’t get where he was today by allowing rather nice first editions to waltz off his shelves.

‘So if we could just settle up here…’ says the man.

Settle up, indeed. As though Fell were about to hand him a packet of cigarettes and a newspaper. Or an Oyster card, or one of those things they put in mobile telephones[1].  

‘Yes, of course,’ says Fell. He smiles at the man. ‘Step this way, please.’

They make their way over to the counter, where whole dynasties of spiders have raised offspring and systematically kept termites and the occasional _nouveau riche_ silverworm out of the _nice_ parts of desk and till. The spiders scatter and can only watch, appalled, as Fell’s soft plump hand destroys a web that has been in the family for five generations.

The man hands over a card. Slim and sleek and so black it leaches away the last glimmers of light in the shop.

‘I’m afraid we don’t accept…’ Fell squints, trying to discern the name of the provider anywhere on that ominous sable surface, ‘Crowley?’

‘That’s my name,’ says the man.

‘Well, I’m afraid we don’t take this-’ (one more attempt, and Fell gives up) ‘this carrier,’ says Fell, pushing the card back.

Crowley’s eyebrows flicker up and down. ‘No problem,’ he says. ‘How about this one?’

Another card, a pale silver-grey. A Visa.

‘Or that one,’ says Fell.

‘You don’t… take … Visa,’ says Crowley.

‘I’m afraid not,’ says Fell.

‘Or Mastercard?’ says Crowley, with not a hint of surprise.

‘Oh dear, no.’

Crowley leans in very close, elbows on the counter. Fell refuses to budge, even when Crowley’s forearms brush his waistcoat. ‘What _do_ you take?’

Well, Fell is not going to be taken in by a trick so pitiful. ‘I shan’t know until I see it, I’m afraid,’ he says, and decides to try a little detail, ‘modern technology, all these names, Go this and Mondo that and Birdie the other, never had much of a head for finance - ’

‘Tricky, then,’ says Crowley, yellow eyes taking in Fell, ‘owning a business.’

Fell smiles. He even makes it apologetic. ‘It can be, yes.’

‘Well,’ says Crowley, ‘you must take this,’ and out comes another rectangle of plastic, gilt-edged and intolerably pleased with itself. ‘It’s covered by the Universal Service Obligation, you have to take it, it’s the law.’

‘Is that true?’ says Fell. He’ll admit he’s not an authority, but this seems …

Crowley’s teeth are long and white. ‘I’d have to report you if you didn’t.’

‘Would you?’ says Fell. The man’s lying, he thinks.

‘Scout’s honour,’ says Crowley.

That settles it. If this yellow-eyed swaggerer with red hair was ever a Scout, then – why then Fell’s a … well, something improbable. Something sinuous and serpentine and strange. Possibly with red hair and cheekbones like twin Matterhorns and …

Anyway.

‘I do take that card,’ says Fell, and Crowley’s eyebrows have barely finished shooting up when he adds ‘BUT I’m afraid my card reader’s broken.’

Crowley’s grin is back. ‘Want me to take a look?’

‘No, thank you,’ says Fell, although he will admit to himself that this is not – strictly speaking – accurate.

‘I’m good with my hands,’ says Crowley. He pushes his sunglasses down his nose and peers up at Fell.

‘Nevertheless,’ says Fell, and knows better than to look at the hands in question.

‘Well,’ says Crowley, ‘I have cash.’

Fell tells him the price. Well, he tells him _Fell’s_ price for the book. A sum that would typically be discussed in hushed tones when looking at diamonds that a girl might rightfully expect to not just be her best friend, but her conscience, protector, tax accountant and guarantor of nightly and violent orgasms.

Crowley shrugs. ‘Sure.’

Fell is tempted to – what’s the expression? – call him on his bluff. But there’s something about that slowly widening grin that makes him say instead: ‘I don’t take cash.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ says Crowley, looking delighted, ‘Cheques, then?’

‘Oh, dear me, no.’

‘Bank order?’

‘So sorry, but - ’

‘Money transfer?’

‘Oh no, isn’t it dreadful, I just don’t - ’

‘Promissory note from the Sultan of Brunei?’

Fell’s eyes widen. ‘Is that … possible?’

‘He’s a personal friend.’

He might be, of course. But Fell looks at the smirk tugging at the man’s lips and says ‘Are you sure?’

Crowley fishes out a mobile – slim, silver, gleaming like a flick-knife – and stands with one long finger poised over the screen, staring at Fell. ‘Why don’t we ask him?’

Once again, Fell can feel it: a hot little bubble, a giggle clamouring to force itself past his teeth. Instead he says ‘I’m afraid promissory notes from South-East Asian sultanates are not acceptable currency.’

‘Not to you, anyway,’ says Crowley. ‘I’ll think of something else.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ says Fell, and he doesn’t smile. Not even a little bit.

He doesn’t.

* * *

 

The next morning, Crowley returns with a bemused-looking man in tow. ‘He’ll fix your card-reader for you,’ announces Crowley. The man nods.

‘How kind,’ says Fell. ‘Most unfortunately, I need to close up for the day.’

‘It’s eleven,’ says Crowley. ‘You open at eleven.’

‘Yes,’ says Fell, ‘but today, I need to close at eleven too.’

‘Why?’

‘Inventory,’ says Fell.

‘Well, when will you be done,’ says Crowley, ‘with _inventory_?’

‘Oh,’ says Fell, ‘you know how it is, terribly hard to tell with these things, inventory, complex business, even slower when it’s just one man - ’

‘I can help,’ says Crowley, ‘and so can Jimothy here - ’

‘Jeremy, sir - ’

‘He can help too.’

‘Thank you,’ says Fell, ‘but I really couldn’t impose.’

‘It’s no imposition,’ says Crowley. Jeremy looks like he might quite like to disagree, but says nothing.

‘Nevertheless,’ says Fell. He’s firm.

Crowley gives him a grin. ‘All right,’ he says, ‘come along, Jimothy.’

‘Jeremy, sir - ’

* * *

 

The next morning, Fell stays closed on principle. When Crowley pops in at 2:30 that afternoon, he says regretfully that he needs to leave on an urgent personal errand.

* * *

 

The next day, Crowley doesn’t put in an appearance until nearly half-past six. Fell forgets to be cross when he tells him that the copy of the _General Theory_ that Crowley wanted to buy had to be sent for re-binding.

* * *

 

The next day, Crowley shows up at eleven o’clock on the dot. Fell tells himself it’s silly to think Crowley’s apologising for having made Fell wait the previous day, because Fell wasn’t waiting, and Crowley couldn’t have known if he was (which he wasn’t) and so there’s nothing to apologise _for_. But Fell still nearly offers him tea when he tells him that no, the _General Theory_ isn’t back from the binder’s yet. A fascinating tumbledown place just on the outskirts of Hay-on-Wye.

Fell asks, in a moment of recklessness, whether Crowley’s ever been to the Hay festival. Crowley says he hasn’t.

‘Do I look like the sort of person who reads?’

‘You do seem,’ ventures Fell, ‘frightfully persistent about reading this particular book.’

‘I told you,’ says Crowley, with a narrow yellow glare, ‘it’s a gift.’

‘Of course,’ says Fell. His eyes flit irresolutely to the teapot. Perhaps -  

Crowley leaves. He doesn’t ask when the book will be back from the binder’s.

* * *

The next morning, Fell receives a brand-new card-reader in the mail. With the compliments of A.J.Crowley.

Fell puts the kettle on. It would be impolite not to, he reasons, when he is turning down a handsome and useful gift.

He rehearses graceful phrases. He ponders whether he overdid it with the pomade – he’s running low, he’ll need to drop in at Trumper’s – and checks his bow-tie at noon, one-thirty-five and four-fifty-seven p.m. It doesn’t do to let standards slide, after all.

He puts out the Lapsang and the Oolong and then very carefully puts the Lapsang back.

Then he puts the Oolong back as well and leaves out the Rooibos.

He fancies Rooibos, that’s all. Lapsang’s too smoky and Oolong’s too light for his personal tastes today. That’s all it is.

He’ll need to go to Fortnum’s too.

Maybe he has time to get scones.

No. No, he doesn’t. He’ll get them – for himself – after he closes for the day.

As a little treat.

For doing the right thing and turning down a gift of doubtful provenance and with almost certainly dubious intent.

Yes. Exactly. For himself.

Fell brews himself a defiant cup.

He thinks he’d have quite preferred Lapsang, actually.

* * *

 

Crowley doesn’t turn up that day.

* * *

 

Or the next.

* * *

 

Fell opens an hour earlier the next day and stays open until ten.

He gets through three pots of tea and runs out of the Lapsang. Fortnum’s is shut when he closes.

* * *

 

The next day Fell works his way through the Rooibos and the Oolong.

* * *

 

He’s jittery and he needs to use the lavatory rather more frequently than he quite likes. And he finds himself lingering, bursting and cross, waiting for the sound of a familiar clanking saunter.

* * *

 

Fell even sells a book the next day. He blames it on the long opening hours and half-term holidays and the caffeine withdrawals. He’ll be particularly cross with himself when he realises the price at which he let go his prized _On the Mystical Rule of Seven Planets_. The one with the typesetting error that transformed ‘Venv _f_ ’ into ‘Peni _f_ ’. He thinks Crowley might have quite enjoyed that one.

Wherever he is.

Where _is_ he?

 

 

[1] Fell can’t abide the things. He can tolerate electronic mail – he quite likes being able to send letters very, very fast, though he is less thrilled about receiving replies so quickly – but mobile telephones offend him viscerally. He has a pristine, gleaming black Bakelite with a piercing, imperious ring. He responds with a cheery ‘AHOY HOY’ when perfect strangers – and they are always perfect strangers – call. When people try to sell him insurance for terrible accidents that they assure him weren’t his fault, he painstakingly explains their error. He answers surveys in meticulous and exact detail. He has been widely blacklisted by every major telemarketer and market research company in Europe.


	2. Chapter 2

Anthony J Crowley is a man of property. His possessions number, among others: a rather nice flat in a rather nice Edwardian mansion block in Brook Street; a rather nice Bentley that did rather well at its debut at Le Mans in 1927 and that still does rather nice times when Crowley can get down to the country and past the M25; and a collection of rather nice snakeskin boots made by a rather well-known Belgravia shoemaker.

His possessions do not, at present, include a first edition of John Maynard Keynes’ a _General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money_ , but he’s working on it.

Or he would be, were it not for another recent addition to his possessions: a particularly nasty case of the ‘flu, which, frankly, he could do without.

For the past five days, Crowley has honked and sniffled and glared balefully at the teetering cairn of tissues on his bedside table. He feels like every single part of him has been scraped out, dipped in vomit and acid, and put back precisely thirty degrees east of where it ought to be. His entire body is a bloodshot eye.

He finds himself wanting shameful things. Things like soup, and tea, and Vicks Vaporub on his chest. Or more specifically a soft hand rubbing said Vaporub on his chest while a soft voice tells him he’s good, so good, and pale blue eyes peer at him over tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and …

No.

Crowley is delirious. He is weak, and feverish, and his brain is making a spirited attempt at a getaway through his nose every time he sneezes, and the merest brush of his pyjamas against his forearm makes him want to scream, and that is the only reason – the _only_ reason – that he wants things like tea and ginger biscuits and pale blonde curls tickling his wrist and prim voices clucking fussily over him and …

No.

This is mawkish, and unnecessary, and born completely of fever dreams and runny noses, Crowley tells himself. He’s just feeling put out because he’d sent Fell a card-reader and he was rather looking forward to seeing how that pouting fluttering bewaistcoated Pooh Bear princess would wriggle out of _that_ one.

That’s all.

He’d probably have broken it in front of Crowley’s eyes.

Or spilt tea over it and clucked with not an ounce of remorse.

Or sat on it. Just … wriggling deliciously [not deliciously, _not_ deliciously, or tantalisingly, or whatever the hell other sub-pornographic descriptors his Theraflu-addled brain is helpfully supplying him, not wriggling _in any noteworthy way at all_ ] until he broke it.

And then poured tea over it for good measure.

Making unflinching eye contact with Crowley as he did so.

Crowley, he decides, would quite like some tea.

Tea. Yes. That’s what all this is about.

A deep-seated, soul-consuming yearning for …

What was it that Fell had had brewing?

Something light and floral and a brush, the merest hairsbreadth, away from a cordial.

With elderflower, probably.

Which Fell … also probably likes.

Probably.

But Crowley doesn’t.

Crowley wants tea.

Crowley has the flu, and he wants tea, and he doesn’t keep any in the house, because Crowley doesn’t like tea, not really, so of course there isn’t even any PG sodding Tips in his spare, gleaming kitchen, let alone the mossy dark leaves he craves, because apparently having a cold has turned him into a tweedy relic who bursts out of his trousers when he hears the Antiques Roadshow theme tune.

And now the entryphone’s ringing.

‘Fuck off,’ says Crowley. The entryphone pays him no mind.

‘Leave. Be. Alode.’ says Crowley. The entryphone pays him no mind.

‘Ugh,’ says Crowley. The entryphone pays him no mind.

It is for reasons such as these, reflects Crowley as he drags himself off the bed and trudges to the door, that he ought to have a butler. Of course, he’s not always ill, hard as it is to remember in these pitiless seventy-two-hour-long days of tender red noses and phlegm. He is, in fact, usually _not_ ill. And there he’d be, with a butler on his hands, drawing breath and a salary, needing to be – what? – entertained? Spoken to? Understood? Occasionally thwarted?

Seems like work, he decides, as he bends to the entryphone.

‘What?’ he says.

‘Oh,’ says a voice. A very familiar voice. ‘Oh, I ought, perhaps, to have – called ahead? Yes. Oh. Oh, dear me.’

Crowley’s nose bumps the screen. It shouldn’t be – there’s no reason to – how – but there, for some ineffable reason, is a familiar round face, with a familiar mop of pale curls a-quiver, and a rather _un_ familiar expression of guilt and triumph and defiance and supplication.

‘Fell?’ he says.

The face on the screen brightens. ‘You remembered!’

‘Of course I,’ says Crowley, ‘I bead – you should – you should cobe up.’

He buzzes Fell through and twirls irresolutely. He straightens the lapel of his dressing gown and then very carefully unties the sash. He gropes for his sunglasses and curses as he smudges the lens. He leans against the doorjamb and pushes his sunglasses down his nose as far as they’ll go. He yelps as they catch against his nostrils, chafed and sore because not all the aloe vera in the world can sweeten the irreducible act of repeated and vigorous nose-blowing.

When Fell appears, his cheeks are pink and there’s a smile trembling on his lips, which falls as he catches sight of Crowley.

‘You’re unwell!’

Crowley shrugs, nonchalantly. His gown slides off his shoulder. Nonchalantly. His fingers nonchalantly twitch to grab for it but he leaves it when he sees the way Fell’s eyes track the movement. Not very nonchalantly at all.

‘’s dothig,’ he says.

‘It doesn’t _seem_ like nothing,’ says Fell. ‘Are you taking something for it?’

‘I’b takig _everythig_ for it,’ says Crowley, glumly.

‘Oh _dear_ ,’ says Fell, ‘you do sound dreadful.’

‘Thak you,’ says Crowley, with extravagant sarcasm, and sniffs. Not entirely voluntarily.

‘Oh dear,’ says Fell, ‘and here I am, imposing on your rest.’ His shoulders hunch and then straighten again, in rapid succession. Like a slow-motion wriggle, thinks Crowley, watching him. Also he’s looking at Crowley. Expectantly. Hopefully. Fearfully? Crowley pushes down his sunglasses to get a better read.

‘You’re, er,’ he says, as Fell’s eyes turn bigger and bluer, ‘you aren’t. Ibposig. I - ’

Fell’s face has broken out into a riot of teeth and twinkles. ‘ _Thank_ you.’ He bounces on his toes for a moment and then gestures. ‘You ought to – oh, please, lie down, let me get you some – tea! Tea?’

Crowley slumps and shakes his head. ‘Do tea,’ he says, and basks in the warm wave of his grievances washing over him. ‘Do tea id the house.’

Fell’s eyes are huge, his curls quivering like tugboats on storm-tossed seas. Crowley draws himself up to his full height and raises his chin. He says, loftily: ‘I’b doig without.’

Fell’s plump well-kept hand creeps to the front of his waistcoat. ‘My dear,’ he says, and coughs, ‘m-my dear man, this will not _do_.’

Crowley hunches a shoulder and looks away. ‘I’ll badage,’ he says, ‘do’t worry.’

It’s a good line, he thinks, and a good pose. The light catches his profile just right. He looks noble, he thinks. Stalwart. Resolute.

It is possibly less than ideal that his flu chooses this particular moment to wallop him with a titanic, racking sneeze, but you can’t have everything.

When Crowley straightens up, making a frantic grab for his sunglasses as he does so, Fell’s gone.

‘You – where – it - ’

Crowley whirls around dressing gown whipping itself around his ankles. He glares at his drawing room. He stalks into his kitchen. He scowls at his gloxinia, which scowls back[1].

He contemplates rushing out into the street for fully thirty seconds before he slams the door shut and stamps back to bed. He casts off his dressing gown and flumps onto the bed.

He should lift the duvet, he thinks. Get beneath the covers.

He curls up on his side instead.

He’ll die, thinks Crowley, and then they’ll all be sorry.

All of them.

But especially Fell.

Fell who couldn’t be arsed to sell Crowley one sodding book, and who tracked Crowley down to his home to, to gloat over his abject and pitiful tealessness and then buggered off in Crowley’s hour of need and tea drought.

Which … does raise a question, actually.

Several questions.

Crowley finds he’s not surprised when the entryphone buzzes and he sees Fell’s face, pink and earnest, at the door.

He has many thoughts and opinions and surmises and even the occasional feeling at the sight. ‘Surprise’ is not one of them.

He lets Fell in, and his eyes drop to the hamper in Fell’s hands.

‘If you could show me through to your kitchen…?’

Fell bustles about the kitchen – and he does bustle – placing the hamper down carefully, and extracting bags and bags and bags of tea, and a pot, and a strainer, and a tea-set, and a cosy, and a tin of biscuits that Crowley absolutely does not bound over to confirm are ginger. Napolitains, to be exact.

‘You said you had no tea,’ says Fell, ‘and Fortnum’s is so close, and really it’s vital that you have _some_ variety, and then I wondered if you had the _equipage_ to make the tea, and I thought you felt the lack so keenly, surely you must, but what if you didn’t, what an imposition, what a _double_ imposition to intrude again on you with bags and bags of tea that you couldn’t, ah, translate into anything useful, and so I really must apologise if I’m _inundating_ you with superfluous supplies,’ and here Fell’s eyes flit politely over the gleaming, cavernously empty expanses of Crowley’s kitchen, ‘but I thought this might be best.’

Crowley nods. Fell beams.

‘Now you go lie down,’ he says, ‘and I’ll bring you some tea. Milk?’

Crowley, whose feet were carrying him to his bedroom largely without waiting for his permission, pauses. He turns to look at Fell, who is gazing at him with perhaps disproportionate intensity. Much, he feels, hangs on his reply.

‘No?’ he ventures, more or less at random. Fell’s bursting sunshine smile reassures him.

He arranges himself in bed, and wonders whether he should slide the top button of his shirt out of the eye. He gives this tense thought while listening for the sounds of water bubbling and china clanking.

By the time Fell has let himself into Crowley’s bedroom, Crowley has unbuttoned his top two buttons, then the third, rebuttoned them all, then just the first, then the second, and only just restrained himself from tearing off the whole job lot due to a) a lack of time, and b) his still extant flu.

Fell is concentrating on balancing a teapot, two cups of tea and a plate of Napolitains on a silver tray that Crowley is fairly sure he does not, and never has, owned.

When he sets down his cargo, though, his eyes flicker to Crowley’s chest and a small, precise circle of scarlet blossoms on his cheeks.

Fuck the flu, Crowley should have gone with his first[2] instincts and welcomed Fell into his boudoir shirtless. Shirtless with an untied dressing gown.

In deference to the flu, of course.

‘Tea!’ says Fell, with brittle goodwill. He hands Crowley a teacup, looking everywhere but at his chest. Tickled, Crowley leans forward to take the cup. He lets his fingers slide along Fell’s (soft, Crowley’d known, he’d fucking _known_ they’d be soft) …

And yelps as Fell starts and send tea flying over the rim of the cup and onto Crowley’s fingers.

‘Oh, dear, oh my dear I’m so dreadfully sorry, please let me - ’

Crowley shakes his head. Shirtless would have been a mistake after all, he thinks.  

He takes a sip of the tea.

‘Darjeeling, I thought, for today,’ says Fell. He lifts his own cup to his lips. Crowley watches as he blows, delicately, lashes gilt-edged in the afternoon light.

‘Today?’, he asks. Fell puts down his cup and flushes.

‘I wouldn’t wish to _presume_ , of course, but - ’

‘Have a biscuit,’ says Crowley, quickly. Fell picks one up and considers it carefully, examining its surface for presumably the optimal crunch-versus-shatter faultline to attack. Crowley finds himself holding his breath as he watches Fell’s teeth descend.

* * *

 

The next afternoon, Fell appears with a steaming tureen and a bottle of a rather nice _Gewurztraminer_. ‘I did notice,’ he says, ‘that you only appear to have Bollinger.’

Crowley shrugs. He doesn’t spend much time in his flat.

He watches Fell’s eyes flutter shut as his nose hovers over his spoon of onion soup. He watches as the crust of his roll clings to the side of a pink mouth. He wills Fell to lick the crumb away and takes a long swig of his wine when he does.

‘Wasn’t that _exquisite_?’ says Fell.

‘Yes,’ says Crowley without a moment’s hesitation. He hasn’t touched his soup.

* * *

 

‘You know,’ says Crowley, the next afternoon as he sips at his Oolong, ‘you never said why you were here[3].’

Fell’s eyes widen. ‘If you don’t want me here, I can - ’

‘No,’ says Crowley. ‘You know perfectly well that’s not it.’

‘Well,’ says Fell, ‘you were in quite a state, dear boy, and with nobody to look after you, and honestly how long could you have subsisted on Maltesers and pizza “take-away”, it does seem a waste with _Le Gavroche_ a mere five minutes away, and - ’

‘No,’ says Crowley, ‘when you _first_ came. You didn’t know I was sick then.’

‘Ah,’ says Fell. He puts down his teacup. He fidgets in his chair. ‘Well - ’

Crowley watches him.

‘Well,’ says Fell, ‘you see, I don’t much care for mobile telephones. Dreadful screaming vulgar things, a millstone around your neck, tie you inextricably to the world and its incessant demands, such a complete picture of human bondage really, I don’t - ’

Crowley waits.

‘And so,’ says Fell, ‘I use my landline instead.’

Crowley waits.

‘And on my landline,’ says Fell, ‘nobody ever calls me, you see, except for people trying to sell me things, or find out personal information from me.’

Crowley waits.

‘That they can then use to impersonate me.’

Crowley waits.

‘For the purposes of theft, you understand.’

Crowley waits.

‘Well, after it happens a few times, you see, one does become rather adept at recognising the – er - ’ Fell pauses and licks his lips, ‘tricks of the trade. As it were.’

He looks expectantly at Crowley.

‘You’ve become adept,’ says Crowley, ‘at spotting phishing scams.’

‘Is that what they’re called?’ Fell seems delighted. ‘How charming.’

‘All right,’ says Crowley, ‘but what does that have to do with - ’

‘Yes,’ says Fell. ‘Well. You see,’ his fingers creep across his lap, stealthily towards each other, like pale, well-fed spiders, ‘I thought – when you were – when I didn’t – when you were _absent_. That I – well, I did think it was quite important to tell you why I couldn’t accept your gift.’

Crowley stares.

‘The card-reader?’

Crowley stares.

‘The card-reader that you sent me?’

Crowley stares. Then he says ‘You wanted … to find me … to tell me you couldn’t take the card-reader.’

Fell brightens. ‘Yes! But you weren’t _there_.’

‘I had the flu,’ says Crowley.

‘Yes,’ says Fell soothingly, ‘but I didn’t know that.’

‘So how - ’ says Crowley, and then stops. ‘You – phished me? To find out where I live?’

Fell squirms in his seat. ‘It isn’t terribly difficult,’ he says. ‘I had your name and your credit card number. Really, security’s terribly lax, one does feel that someone ought to do something.’

‘You … blagged my address … from …’

‘Well, you showed me your Visa card,’ says Fell, ‘And your Mastercard. And your American Express. There are numbers one can dial. They were very obliging.’

‘I’m sure they were,’ says Crowley.

‘You might want to change your personal identification numbers on your online banking accounts, though.’

Crowley sits back.

‘I didn’t know where you’d _gone_!’ says Fell. ‘I didn’t know where you were, or if you were, were coming back, at all, ever, and - ’

Crowley looks at him. Fell coughs and adjusts his bow-tie. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘well. As I say, you really ought to take some steps to tighten up security.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Crowley, ‘where would we be if we all of us did our jobs?’

Fell looks down and smiles. Crowley says ‘So, about that Keynes book - ’

‘It’s not back from the binder’s yet,’ says Fell, as though someone pushed a button somewhere.

Crowley grins.

* * *

 

The book’s not back from the binder’s when the pair of them go on their first official date (smoked salmon at Claridge’s), or when Fell asks Crowley to marry him over grouse at the Ritz.

But on their first anniversary, as the candlelight flickers over their table in The Harrow, Fell slides a copy across the table to Crowley.

‘Thank you, angel,’ says Crowley.

‘I shall want it back, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘For the shop.’

‘Naturally.’

The next time he visits the shop, he sees an importunate customer reach for the book, only for Fell to materialise and say: ‘I’m afraid that book is reserved.’ He shoots a glance at Crowley, lifts his chin and says, with relish: ‘Permanently.’

 

[1] As does his yucca, his aspidistra, his delphinium, and his Chinese money plant. All verdant and confidently, obnoxiously flourishing, in the teeth of their titular master’s disdain. Crowley is regularly given potted plants by nervous and unimaginative subordinates whenever he’s been bullied into permitting colleagues into his home for a spot of enforced seasonal jollity. He has no earthly use for thema, or they for him. They do, however, have access to southern and eastern exposures, and virtually limitless quantities of the world’s only truly renewable resource: spite.

a The plants, that is to say, not the colleaguesb.

b Well, all right. Also the colleagues.

[2] They were not his first instincts. Or his second, or his thirda.

a Well, they _were_ his third, but they were also his sixth, his tenth and thirteenth.

[3] It should be pointed out that Crowley waited until the letters ‘n’ and ‘m’ had returned to his spoken lexicon before he even began thinking of having the following conversation.

**Author's Note:**

> I always liked the book, but there's something about the gleeful idiocy of Aziraphale and Crowley on the TV show that just...
> 
> My tumblr handle is [itsevidentvery](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to come yell with me there.
> 
> A handy-dandy rebloggable link for this fic is [here](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/186122031985/a-bookshop-is-not-a-business-chapter-1) if you are so inclined.


End file.
